Gorilla, My Love

by Toni Cade Bambara

  “Whatcha got there, Nez, love charm?”

  “Just keys,” she says, opening her fist to show the keys and the crumpled note Roy left which we all been dying to read, but she ain’t put it down in the past twenty-four hours. “Just keys,” she says again to the old woman.

  “Same thing, love. He give em back, hunh? Love charms are temporary things if your mojo ain’t total.” Inez look at the old woman so hard she shift her eyes back into the lentils, pickin the crap out with them gnarled hands. Then Inez beam them do-this-do-that eyes on her brother.

  “Look now, Thumb, you supposed to be painting the upstairs rooms. And take a bath too. Incense can’t cover funk too tough.” She yell up after him when he dashes past, mumblin about what a cold bitch she is, to tell Sugar and them to set her makeup out and clear off the bed. Then she beaming them eyes on Great Ma Drew.

  “I’ma do this floor up proper,” the old lady say right quick, meaning the kitchen and dining room and pantry and fireplace.

  “Look, just give the floor a quick douche, swipe at the table with some polish and get the pots on.” Then Inez back up the stairs. But time she up on the landing, talking to Sugar and them, the old lady easin herself back in the chair and spreading the cards out. She crook a finger to me to come over and study the cards with her. Jack o’diamonds is on the floor. Jack o’diamonds is always on the floor when Great Ma Drew do the cards for Inez. And I’m waitin for her to lean over and say, “Lookee there, the good man done got away” and then complain about her arthritis. Which means I’m supposed to stop pressing the nightgowns out and lean over and get the good man and spin him cross the cards to see how he settle. Maybe on the joy cards, in which case I’m supposed to race through the house, hollerin jubilee. Or maybe on the ace of sorrows, in which case I’m supposed to make an appropriate face and fix her a drink so we can commiserate about Roy never comin home again to build a fire in the fireplace and play the flute. I continue pressin is what I do and let the jack o’diamonds go for himself.

  “See now, when I was comin up,” she say, bammin the cards down, “the older women would gather together to train you young girls in the ways of menfolks.” I yawn cause I’m sick of this speech and in a hurry to get back upstairs with Sugar and them, cause it’s right about this time they’ll be ordering pizza or something to tide them over till Great Ma Drew can get the supper together. “And you learn what to do when mens get raffish or start gazin too long a spell into empty space. And you learn about charms and things and how to read the signs so …”

  “You wanna get me another bowl of water so I can do these lace numbers?”

  “I do not,” she say, which is O.K. by me, long as she shuttin up about that particular shit. But soon’s I fold the lace jobs and reachin for the red see-through, here she go again. “You ain’t but a teen-ager and think you grown cause you in college and got a story in some magazine and had some silly boys in your bed, but you unprepared. Young gal like you out there in the wilderness with no proper training, like a babe going into a dynamite shaft.”

  “A what? You been drinking that furniture polish again?”

  “A dynamite shaft, I said. All boarded up on the outside and ready to blow. And only shaky beams holding the rocks up off your head and splinterin fast fast and the tunnel way so dark and bumpy you couldn’t find your way outta there even if you had the best flashlight that money …”

  “Hey look here, my sweet,” I say, snatchin up the gowns for the getaway, “put up the ironin board for me will ya, O.K.? Gotta run. You’re a dear.”

  “Kiss my ass,” she say, and sweeps the jack o’diamonds up off the floor, neat, smooth, unarthritic.

  “You ain’t taking these drawers to Knoxville,” say Sugar, holding up some blue cotton panties with white polka dots. “Oh no, sister, I ain’t lettin you pack this draggy number.”

  Inez don’t even turn around. Not that there’s any room to turn around in. Marcy in the closets, the doors folded completely open, snatching sweaters every which way till she find somethin suitable to pack, then she fling it over on the bed. Gail crawling all over the bed, her behind all up in the air and the tops of the pantyhose showing. She matchin up tops and bottoms—velvet bells this and cableknit that. Sugar, at the chest of drawers Roy’d built in under the bay window. She damn near yanking the hardware off and rummaging through the lingerie like she got a tip money hidden somewhere. I just stand there for a second, cause it’s a funny sight.

  “What about this?” Marcy ask, and everybody freeze, screwin up they face to see if the red crochet dress is saying anything. Everybody but Inez. She’s very methodically packin her douche bag, pills, deodorant and stuff into a plastic case. And I’m wondering why they all bothered to come over and tear up the place like this when number two, the bag Inez got sitting on the bench is so damn small, and number one, she pack what she gonna pack and later for all of them anyway.

  “Leave the door open, sweetheart,” Sugar say to me. “Don’t want to miss the bell.”

  “Whatshisname picking you up here, Sugar?” Gail say. “I don’t know what you see in that ugly old man. Got no dough and no politics neither.” Sugar just look at Gail and they all bust out laughing. “That cat in the suede hat you had with you at Marcy’s opening was fine. Whatcha want with Whatshisname is beyond my brain.” Sugar give Gail that same look and they fall out again. “Now seems to me Leon would catch your eye. He thinks you shit diamonds and pee Chanel Number Five, the way he knocks himself out every time you ask him to do something. Ain’t too heavy in the mind department, but he looks as though he might be able to keep up with his own socks and fix a leaky faucet or something.”

  “I love a handy man,” sigh Marcy, posing in the closet like she’d grown up worshippin toolboxes and hacksaws and shit, dream-walking through lumberyards questing the plumber prince or something. We just look at her, Marcy Stevens, sculptress in a trance, leaning against Inez’s shoerack with a long velour purple knit tunic up against her like it was the fairy-princess gown. Then the bell rings and it’s the man with the heroes, and Sugar with her plump self scoots back with the piles of stuff they all fall on so fast, all I get is two plastic cups of cole slaw and half a hero, mostly sauce and onions.

  “One day,” say Sugar; lickin the tomato sauce off her arm, “what I want’s goin to be on the menu. Served up to my taste and all on one plate, so I don’t have to clutter up the whole damn table with a teensy bowl of this and a plate of extra that and a side order of what the hell.” She shimmy her buns on top of the dresser and plants her feet in the bottom drawer. “Cause let Sister Sugar hip you bitches, living à la carte is a trip.”

  “Tell it all, Sister Sugar,” say Gail.

  “First, you gotta have you a fuckin man, a cat that can get down between the sheets without a whole lotta bullshit about ‘This is a spiritual union’ or ‘Women are always rippin off my body’ or …”

  “Amen,” say Marcy.

  “Course, he usually look like hell and got no I.Q. atall,” say Sugar. “So you gots to have you a go-around man, a dude that can put in a good appearance so you won’t be shame to take him round your friends, case he insist on opening his big mouth.” Inez laugh her first laugh of the day and lean back in the chair to do her nails.

  “Course, the go-round man ain’t about you, he about his rap and his wardrobe and his imported deodorant stick with the foreign ingredients listed there at the bottom in some unknown tongue. Which means you gots to have a gofor.”

  “A gopher?” I ask, and they all look me over carefully to make sure I am finally old enough for these big-league sessions.

  “Like when you crazy with pain and totally messed around and won’t nobody on earth go for your shit, you send for the gofor cause he go for it whatever it is.”

  “Rah-rah for the gofors,” say Marcy, flapping a sea-green paisley vest in the air.

  “You gots to have your money man, that goes without saying. And more importantly, you got to have you a tender ma
n.”

  “I loves me a tender man,” sigh Marcy, who’s beginning to sound fickle to me cause she sighin just as sexy as she did for the handyman dude.

  “A tender man who can tend to your tenderest needs. Maybe it means painting your bedroom a dumb shade of orange, cause just so happens you need that dumb shade of orange in your life right now. Or holding your head while you heave your insides into the toilet on account you been tryin to drown some jive ass sucker in alcohol, and knowin all the while it won’t wash.”

  “Speak on it, Dame Sugar,” say Gail.

  “Or maybe it’s just spoon-feeding you and putting on your pink angora socks and rubbin your tired feet while you launch into some sad-ass saga about peeing in your pants in the second grade and how that set you on the wrong course of life forever after and …”

  “He’s beginning to sound like the gopher,” I say, and then I’m sorry. Cause they all lookin at me, even Inez with her left hand rotating and glistening red, like I am indeed that pitiful babe stumblin into Great Ma Drew’s dynamite shaft without a candle to my name.

  “Oh but honey,” Sugar say, shoveling in the green peppers, “one day I’m gonna have it all and right on the same plate. Cause à la carte is a bitch.”

  “Being a together woman is a bitch,” say Marcy.

  “Being a bitch is a bitch,” say Gail.

  “Men a bitch,” is my two cents, which seems to get over.

  “But one day my prince will come,” sings Marcy, waltzing around with Inez’s black sequined sweater. Sugar look at her like she crazy. Inez smile that slow smile. But Gail get up off the bed for a closer look at the hole in Marcy head.

  “Prince? You waiting for a prince? That’s anti-struggle, sister,” say Gail and they all crack, “counter-revolutionary and just plain foolish. Princes do not come. Frogs come. And they are never the enchanted kind. And they are definitely not about some magic kiss. They give you warts, sister.”

  “That’s right,” say Sugar, jumping down from the dresser and poking up her belly and swellin up her cheeks till I thought I’d die.

  “It’s either à la carte or half a loaf,” Inez say real serious, which is her way. Then she’s messin around in the manicure basket for the cotton and not sayin nuthin. And it’s grim and sober there for a minute. Marcy quiet in the closet, selecting shoes. Gail making piles of hot pants. Sugar back on the dresser top, devourin a pickled pepper very quietly. Everybody thinking the same thing, but Inez won’t speak on it, cause that’s her way too, silent. And after living with cousin Inez for three years, I still can’t get used to it. Then it’s real quiet. And you can hear Thumb upstairs banging cans around and Great Ma Drew downstairs hummin. And it always winds up to a moment like this when there’s some big thing in Inez’s life and all her friends gather, mostly the in-group. And everybody lays out their program, most times movin on incomplete information cause Inez don’t give up much, so they make up whatever’s missing and then exchange advice and yell at each other’s stupidities and trade stories and finally lay the consensus thing to be done on Inez. Who turns right around and does exactly what she’s going to do in the first damn place, cause that too is her way. Like hauling me out of my grandmother’s house to come live with her and then telling Sugar to cough up my school expenses and find me a job, when it was mainly Sugar who said to leave my ass where it was. Or like buyin this brownstone and hiring Great Ma Drew as housekeeper, when as any fool can see she can’t hardly keep care of her own damn self, much less a four-story house. Or like quitting a good paying job in publishing to set up the jazz academy so Roy wouldn’t have to go on the road so much. Or like havin Roy move in and then refusin to marry him. And Sugar goin into a marvelous breakdown screamin, “You gotta protect your interest with a legalized piece of paper, Nez.” And Inez sayin “Sheeeet.”

  “Whatcha goin to do, Nez?” say Marcy hidin in the closet, all big and brave. “Could be he’s already accepted the teaching post and found himself another woman.” She say it real quiet, swingin hangers back and forth and not showing herself in case Inez starts beamin them eyes. And it’s a surprise to me, cause little Marcy never is the one to come right on out with stuff lessen it’s her own stuff. In which case she swoons and rants and bites her knuckles and talks about how all her life she been waitin for little boys to grow up and stop pullin her braids, waitin for big boys to grow up and put down the pool sticks and come find her, young men to grow up and stop lying to each other in the locker room and come deal with her for real, men to grow up and stop saving themselves for Hollywood, or throwing themselves away on drugs, or kidding themselves with gray girls. To just grow up and stop short right in front of her and say, I’m here, Marcy Alexander Stevens. I am your man and everything gonna be alright from here on end.

  “What the note say, Nez?” Marcy ask after while, but still in the closet. Inez don’t answer. She’s polishing her toes now. Her head tilted on the knee so that the lamp light make her fro seem grayer than it really is. “Just ‘Bye bye,’ or does it …”

  “If it is another woman,” say Gail real slow, “which it very well may be, they might be married by now. He left two weeks before you got back from lecturing. He’s been down there time and time again these past few months and it don’t take that much to set up a concert. Mayhap he’s had a babe stashed away in Knoxville all this time. Though why anyone’d want to be in Knoxville when everything they could possibly ever want in life is right here in New York is beyond my brain.”

  Inez cock her head to the side and say “Thanks, Gail,” very quietly, then starts in on her left foot with the polish.

  “Well,” said Sugar, “I never was one to put up no hue and cry over some man slipping through my chubby fingers, but that particular man of yours, Nez, is somethin special. I mean the two of you kept my faith in the blue-plate special.” Sugar walk around Inez’s chair then stop before the mirror to tug her suede skirt around, suckin her stomach in and winkin at herself. “It always seemed to me like … well, look at it,” she said, heaving an arm full of air up on the suitcase like she was spreadin out maps and charts for study hour. “A man, no matter how messy he is, I mean even if he some straight-up basket case, can always get some good woman, two or three for that matter, to go for his shit. Right? But a woman? If her shit ain’t together, she can forget it unless she very lucky and got a Great Ma Drew working roots. If she halfway together and very cold-blooded, then maybe she can snatch some sucker and bump his head. But if she got her Johnson together, is fine in her do, superbad in her work, and terrible, terrible extra plus with her woman thing, well …” Sugar heaved up another armful of air for examination, “she’ll just bop along the waves forever with nobody to catch her up, cause her thing is so tough, and it’s so crystal clear she ain’t goin for bullshit, that can’t no man pump up his boyish heart good enough to come deal with her one on one.” Sugar flopped down on the bed beside Gail and stared at her stockings, exhausted. “But you and Roy,” she said, shakin her head and bellowing, “Chiiiiiile. Look here. I am in the prime of my life and I am ready to cop. Do you hear me?” she said, jumping up.

  “We hear you,” say Gail.

  “I am in the prime of my life and I am ready to cop. And I mean to cop. And I want it all and all on one damn plate. Am I coming through?”

  “Loud and clear, Sugar,” say Gail.

  “And if I can’t have the blue-plate special I have been readying up for these thirty-some odd years, then I’ll settle for the half loaf Nez say Roy is. Any day. Any time of any day at all. Big black dude with fat thighs pushing through his slacks. Deep brown voice sayin righteous reasonable lovin things. Beautiful hands and teeth. And when he moves and them corduroys go swish swish I just holler do it do it. Do you understand?”

  “You smokin,” say Gail.

  I’m lookin close at Sugar cause I hear the note that means she goin to cry. And when she starts that bouncin up and down on her toes, not givin a shit bout runs in her stockings or wrinkles in the suede
, why then, that’s a sign of rain. And it embarrasses me. Not when she cries, but later. Like at the television studio when I come meet her for lunch and she in her long leather outfit with the bad hat ace deuce and her shades and she dealin and doin and kickin ass and everybody jumpin hup-two-three cause Mrs. Elizabeth Daley born Williams called Sugar is a bad bitch and on the case and doin derrin-do. And she strolls across the carpet in them incredible boots and that cigarette holder at just-so angle and the impossible eyelashes just right and the make-up unduplicatable. And she’s takin me to some fancy restaurant even if I do pick over the food, cause she says I must be exposed to the very best so can’t no Nedick’s nigger sweep me off my feet and set me on my ass. And she leans over to kiss me hello. And she smells good. And says I look nice in my Levi suit and that I’ll get over my army-navy-surplus defiance soon and be gorgeous like she never was. And we stroll out and everybody noddin and wavin and grinnin and damn near yankin the door off the hinges and hailin a cab. Then I get embarrassed about them wet eyes of 3:00 A.M. some weeks ago. Like I’m carryin an awful secret in my pea-jacket pocket and must not pull my hand out too quick less it tumble out and sprawl on the pavement for enemy eyes, and Sugar be undone.

  “Hand me some cole slaw,” Sugar say to me, kickin off her shoes. And I hear in her voice that she is not goin to cry but eat herself sick instead. Gail assists her in the uncappin of the cup and the huntin for the fork like the friend she is. And I’m waitin on Gail to speak. Not so much for Inez, cause Inez just don’t care what’s goin on in other people’s heads, her program’s internal. But speak for me, cause I’m keepin a notebook on all this, so I won’t have all this torture and crap to go through when I jump into my woman stride and stalk out on the world. So I’m lookin to Gail.